Postings by Kimiko

Have you tried yipping in the way a dog would? I know sometimes it's hard to remember when something hurts and you just want to curse, but yelling or getting worked up will also just raise the dogs energy in return. In my puppy class our instructor told us to yelp like a puppy ANY time the dog puts their mouth on you. It worked great on my dog, but she's very sensitive and compassionate. It's worth a try and if that communicates to your pup that she's hurting you, then great!

The suggestion to keep your hand in a fist around the treat is great. The pup can't get to it. Try the yipping if she scratches at you too hard or does try to bite. Don't do this while you're training for other behaviors, though, since it would be confusing to ask him to sit and then withhold the treat until he is working with you calmly and make that into the exercise.

Was she pooping inside before? When dogs move to new owners, sometimes their potty training can slip up because of the stress and not knowing what you want of her in her new place. Be very positive when she goes potty outside and praise her.

But for the explosive diarrhea. It's frustrating, but it's not like she just decided to give herself the runs. It's very hard to hold. Do you know what her signals are when she needs to go out? It might be as simple as her pacing around in the room. Or it might simply be that her upset stomach is making it come up on her too quick to let you know. If you switched her food without making it a slow transition then it certainly can cause immediate stomach upset. Some dogs can take it over a few days of mixing and some do much better if you make sure it takes more than a week to move slowly onto the new food. She might have a sensitive stomach to these changes, and it might have to do with the fact that Blue Buffalo is such a rich food that's giving her such an upset stomach. If you switched her straight onto the new food quickly, try to get some of her old food and mix it at least half if not more of her old food and re-transition her. I agree the way you've described it, it doesn't sound like a potty training issue.

Now and then. I really, really try not to as my dog is extraordinarily sensitive. For example, when I came home yesterday, she'd had an odd out accident. All I said was 'what did you do' and she has been cowering around me every time she sees me now. She acts like she's been beaten her whole life when the worst she's had is her collar grabbed when she's not listening and trying to put herself in a dangerous situation (normally directly involving other dogs), then she'll hit the ground. I feel awful and look even worse, so I try to be very very careful not to put pressure on her paper thin confidence.

Now, my cats I could yell at all day and they wouldn't even give me a second look. Sometimes I snap at my really obnoxious cat because he will constantly scream at me all day and sometimes I just can't handle it anymore. Of course, then Kimi still cowers around like I'm a monster.

I've had people tell me she looks like every variety of wild animal that even resembles a dog. Coyote and fox are the most popular, though some have gone for wolf for some reason. I've been asked point blank if she was part fox.

My own mother said she was only going to be the size of a sheltie as a puppy. Once she outgrew that estimate, she now thinks she's going to be 70lb. (She's 35 at 13 months)

She 'smiles' when she's excited, so she's been called mean quite a few times.

The best one was a friend of a friend who saw me working on her stay and told me I could leave her in a stay outside a store and go shopping. They were very excited about this possibility.

My pup broke the longest bone in one of her toes on Dec 1st. She'd been running completely normally and hadn't been showing any signs of discomfort recently, so I finally had started bringing fetch back into her boring life in small, low impact doses. A few days ago I really let her run herself out and she started limping again. She hadn't jumped or done anything abnormal. She just started limping again.

An x-ray later, and the vet thinks it never healed. She'd had a cast on before, put on by the other vet in the office, but my regular vet isn't a fan, so she isn't going to put one on her again. She gave me some pain meds on an as needed basis and we're keeping her limited in activity. Or as limited as you can keep a year old pup. She doesn't seem to care that it's broken at all, and if I hadn't seen the x-ray, I wouldn't think it was damaged at all.

Is there anything I can give her or add to her feeding to help boost her natural healing process? My mom went on and on about gelatin and chicken stock, but she already gets trachea for a little glucosamine boost. But I want to help her heal up well before she writes bad poetry about how boring a parent I am since she doesn't get to go running like she wants.

When I got Kimi at about 16 weeks, she also had a bad case from the shelter. It was a bit of a pain to get rid of as those cysts can be long lasting and reinfection is pretty common. I lucked out and didn't go disinfectant crazy and still managed to get rid of it, but it took several rounds of meds to finally get her over it.

I didn't notice any long lasting effects, though I do wonder sometimes. The biggest immediate effect was her going from a calm, snuggly puppy straight into an energetic terror as soon as she was finally rid of it for good!

My pup is also spay incontinent and has been since she was spayed. Only in her sleep, though I read that some can get it so bad they dribble while they're awake and age often makes it more likely to occur. But if it's just started, of course the best thing to do is rule out more serious causes. My girl takes a half a pill of D.E.S. every week for her incontinence and it keeps her nice and dry unless I let her gulp down a bunch of water late at night. That said, I pretty much have to take her water up a few hours before bed to be sure.

Man, that's nuts. I've had friends who are 'good in a lot of ways', but the problem is that they were totally toxic in others. It sounds like she's trying to plug the holes in her life with cute pets she think will make her happy and then completely loses interest when the novelty wears of. Totally irresponsible and it certainly sounds like she doesn't even care and justifies what she does to herself.

You're really not going to be able to change that, either. That's for sure, considering everything was about how bad she thinks YOUR dog is when you tried to talk to her. Outrageous. And would her mother even take care of the puppy? Puppies are a major, major headache, especially if it wasn't your decision. Definitely nothing good for the pup, which she'll probably also just leave with her mother indefinitely considering she thinks her other cats are YOUR cats and insists on that delusion.

I hope you can find the rescue who gave her that pup. But just a thought. Is it possible that she picked the pup up somewhere else? Maybe even bought it from someone selling or pawning off puppies in the parking lot at that Petco and she either believed them lying about being a shelter or bought it and is lying about it coming from a shelter in order to look like she's doing the puppy a service by taking it in?

I didn't come to these sites for a while and noticed this when I came back. Good to know there was something behind it, and I completely agree. I rehomed a cat through catster a few years ago to a lovely woman who lived within two hours of me. I got to see their updates for a while as they're no longer very active on the site, but it was a great resource for an adult.

Now, the only thing I can see that's available without having to pay for an ad is craiglist, where I don't reply to a lot of e-mails for being obvious scams or very suspicious responses. And right now I have a FIV+ mom who I took in and am willing to keep and find a home for but the type of person willing to take on a special needs animal likely isn't checking craigslist to find it. Petfinder has taken over pretty much every avenue and no longer allows people to post private ads on their own site, either. I understand the push to adopt from a shelter, but it's so difficult that it pushes even the people trying to very responsibly rehome a pet when they have to towards thinking about putting the pet in a shelter to find a better home.

Except the rescues pretty much ONLY pull from the kill shelters, and most won't even respond to trying to get an animal listed with their group. I'm sure they feel (understandably) that it would take away spotlight from the animals that THEY'RE trying to help, but it's very frustrating when you're an individual trying to help that animal without dumping it into the overburdened shelter system and the main resources for advertisement being the scary sort. I sift through tons of very suspicious e-mails trying to find homes for these foundlings, and these scammers are starting to get a lot better at trying to sound very legitimate.

She's right around 11 months. So it is possibly a fear period increasing the stress, but she's never been a very at ease pup.

And my trainer didn't tell me to put her on a specific medicine, just told me to consider it with my vet. So in that, she did point me to my vet, though it seemed kind of odd to me to make that immediate jump. I had a cat on amitriptyline for a long while so I'm at least partially familiar with that route, but he was legit crazy. That might also be why I might be overreacting a bit on the prospect.